Guantanamo imprisonment stokes Afghan hatred of US

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Ten years ago US troops took Haji Shahzada
from his rural Afghan home in the early hours of the morning and sent
him on a bizarre journey to prison in Cuba.

Ten years later, back
home on his small farm, he hates the American people with a passion and
says he would take his revenge if he had the chance.

Akhtar
Mohammad was also dragged from his home by American troops who invaded
Afghanistan in October 2001, and also dispatched to the notorious US
military prison at Guantanamo Bay on the Caribbean island.

He too
is bitter, but in a reflection of the complex relationship between the
two countries, the car salesman does not want US troops to leave
Afghanistan yet, fearing a bloody power struggle between competing
warlords.

Both men were accused of being militant members of the
hardline Taliban Islamist movement which was ousted from power by a
US-led coalition in the wake of the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York
and Washington.

Both say they were innocent. And their captors
failed to prove otherwise, releasing them after years in jail and thus
making them martyrs to a system widely reviled by rights groups around
the world.

"I was given a letter that I was innocent. What should I
do with this letter now after I spent four years in jail?" asked
Shahzada, aged about 50, his thin face framed by a large, greying beard.

"They
entered my home, they handcuffed me in my home, my women were there, my
children were sleeping there," he told AFP at his house outside the
southern city of Kandahar.

"If I have a chance to come to power, I
will take my revenge and punish the Americans. They are not good
people, they won't be our friend. They should leave our country now."

The
injustice of imprisonment without trial and reports of harsh treatment
in the cages at Guantanamo -- which received its first prisoners from
the global war on terror on January 11, 2002 -- fuelled anti-American
sentiment, says Afghan writer and analyst Waheed Mujhda.

"Guantanamo has been a big contributing factor to growing violence and
militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan against the US," he told AFP.

"There
were a lot of people who were not Taliban but were imprisoned in
Guantanamo. I personally know people who have joined the Taliban after
their release from Guantanamo."

Shahzada said he was accused by
his captors of being Mullah Khairullah, a senior Taliban leader in the
area, adding: "There were five or six other people taken as Mullah
Khairullah."

The father of eight tells of being humiliated by
being stripped naked and having to use the toilet alongside others --
taboo and offensive in the Afghan code of moral conduct.

"I'm
amazed that my heart didn't stop from shame, how could I become such a
weak Pashtun doing this... I don't know," Shahzada said.

The
Pashtuns, who mainly live in Afghanistan's south, are fiercely proud of
their conservative culture and the men of their independence and
manhood.

Shahzada, like fellow former prisoner Akhtar Mohammad,
says he was not a member of the Taliban, who were targeted by the US for
hosting Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the time of the 9/11
attacks.

"When the Taliban were overthrown from power, the
Americans attacked my house," Mohammad told AFP from his car dealership
in Marawara district of eastern Kunar province.

They claimed he
had worked with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and knew Bin Laden, jailing
him first in the US military prison at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul for
four months and then in Guantanamo Bay for nearly four years.

"It
was totally unjust," said Mohammad, a tall, bearded 45-year-old. "I
haven't seen Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, only heard their names."

Mohammad
said he wanted compensation from the US for his imprisonment, but did
not want to see US troops leave Afghanistan just yet.

"If the
Americans pull out their troops from Afghanistan first, civil strife and
internal fighting will start back in the country. The American troops
should leave Afghanistan when the situation is right in the future."

About
130,000 US-led troops remain in the country, now fighting a Taliban-led
insurgency across Afghanistan. The coalition combat troops are set to
leave the country by the end of 2014, handing control to Afghan forces.

At
least 20 Afghan citizens are believed to be among the 171 remaining
prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and both the Afghan government and the
Taliban want them freed.

But the Taliban have reportedly asked for
the inmates to be sent to Qatar, where the movement plans to set up a
political office seen as a precursor to possible peace talks with the
US, while the government wants them sent to Kabul.

The issue of
Afghan prisoners held by US forces took a fresh twist last week when
President Hamid Karzai abruptly announced that he wanted all inmates at
Bagram prison outside Kabul -- known as "Afghanistan's Guantanamo" --
transferred to Afghan control within a month.

The move came amid
signs that Karzai is concerned at being sidelined in talks between the
Taliban and the US. He insists that any negotiations should be led by
his government.